The Legal Stoic

  Believe it or not, the common preconception of a stoic is wrong.   Which works nicely with the fact that stoics challenge people to question their preconceptions.   I have already used the lame joke that stoics are not Vulcans – they do not seek to suppress emotions.   If anything, stoics are incredibly honest about where our emotions come from – and whether that is appropriate.   One of my cats died on December 24 th , two minutes to midnight.   We saw it coming, he was declining and we were struggling trying to get him to eat and he started seeking the coolness of our bathtub.   We had hoped he could make it through the holidays and allow us to give him a death with dignity.   Instead, he took a turn for the worst, panted, gasped, and died in my wife’s arms. I will not apologize for writing a post about grieving a cat.   He was a member of my family. While the Stoics aimed for a state of emotional tranquility (apatheia), they did not advocate for the suppression of all emotio

  Stoic philosophy is deceptively simple: focus on what you can control, view your emotions as reactions to situations and evaluate them to see if your impressions are rational, bring your desires in line with the rational universe. Except that none of this is easy.   Imagine yourself in your professional life.   I am a lawyer who is heavily involved in motion practice and advocacy.   This means I need to know and understand the underlying law, the court’s rules, and methods of persuasion.   A teacher needs to know the subject matter and different educational theories and practices.   A surgeon needs to understand anatomy and be aware on how to access and repair different parts of the body.   Everybody’s knowledge and skill is learned and honed over a long period of time.   And we all can fail. After significant preparation, I can still lose a hearing.   After preparing an amazing lesson plan, a teacher can still encounter a student who is disruptive and does not respond to the u

  Everybody wants to be happy.   While clearly not everybody IS, everybody WANTS to be happy.   We can have all sorts of discussions about what happiness is or about the social nature of mankind.   Folks chase happiness with things, actions, relationships.   People seek happiness, not knowing what that is or how to achieve it.   Even in our darkest times, if asked whether we would like to be happy, nobody will decline. We frequently just have no idea how to achieve this. Philosophers from all ages and schools have generally tried to ponder two things: how to understand the universe – and honestly, good luck with that – and how to achieve happiness.   Stoics are no different and when it came to happiness, stoicism could be summarized in the simple “virtue is the only good.” Whatever that means. In 58 AD the Stoic Philosopher Seneca wrote to his older brother and sent him an essay called “On the happy life.”   His opening made it clear that while happiness is the goal, actively p

  When I worked at Barnes & Noble, a customer once asked if I could show her the self-help section.   I asked if that didn’t defeat the purpose.   True story.   Self-improvement advice is everywhere.   From online articles to entire sections in bookstores, quotes on throw pillows, Ted talks, YouTube videos, and weird lawyers blogging when they just discovered a cool philosophy.   There are self-help and self-improvement gurus everywhere.   But quite frequently the focus is on how to become more successful or learn techniques to get what you want.   The improvement being sold is still focused on bending the environment to our wishes.   Stoicism is different. When Epictetus was asked how a person could improve relations with a brother, he replied “Philosophy does not claim to secure for us anything outside of our control.”   He further felt that a desire to have one’s wishes fulfilled, regardless of the reasons behind them was madness and insanity.   Put simply, stoic philosoph